The Ragged Edge of Night(88)
“Act?” The word rises on a panicked note.
He is quick to reassure her. “Not me personally. I’ve done my part already. But he’ll be gone soon. Dead.” The Führer.
Elisabeth flinches away, recoiling from his touch, as if the suggestion is one only a madman could have made. They have ground her down so thoroughly that she can’t imagine Germany without Hitler; she no longer remembers this world without war. This is how they succeed, one person at a time: one frightened mother beaten down, too exhausted to resist. And then another, and another.
“It’s true,” Anton says. Now, at last, he knows his wife well enough to trust her. He tells her the secret, quietly, standing so close his voice never carries beyond the rustle of the oak leaves. “We’ve finally got a man on the inside. Not one of the kitchen workers but someone with reliable access. It will be poison. On his food, or in his tea.” You can’t do it any other way. No one owns a pistol anymore—the NSDAP were quick to excise that right back in 1938. A bomb would better express the rage, the pent-up fury that pounds in our heads day after day. A length of black pipe, not much longer than a human heart, filled with jagged things like fear and nails, shards of glass and desperation, capped on either end by the hopelessness of forced silence. But there is the problem of access, now that the July attempt has failed. The Führer surrounds himself with loyalists. Like drones around a queen bee, they circle him in a tight orbit, each one ready with his sting. Anything to shield the pulsing, breeding thing at the heart of the hive. We will only have one chance to strike, so we must not miss our target. “It’s a slow-acting poison, so the ones who taste his food won’t know until it’s too late.”
“Are you sure? Is this real?”
“I’m as sure as I can be.”
“When?”
“I don’t know the date; I wasn’t told. But now that we are poised—”
“Because I don’t know how much longer I can stay, Anton. It’s too much for me to bear, knowing the risks you run, and what they’ll do to you if you’re found out.”
It’s the first suggestion, the first faint intimation Elisabeth has ever made, that he matters so much—that she can’t picture life now without him. She hides her eyes behind her hand and turns away.
To spare her the embarrassment—a raw emotion, suddenly exposed—Anton says, “And the danger to you and the children, of course. If I were caught, they would try to apprehend you, too.” They would try. They would succeed.
“Yes,” she says, briskly, glad for the rescue. “That’s my point exactly. We can’t risk the children any longer.”
“Well, it won’t be much longer now. My part is done, and the plan is in motion. Any day now, we’ll read it in the newspapers: The Führer choked to death on his turnip stew.” With the fist of Anton Starzmann locked around his straining, crushable throat.
“Promise me,” Elisabeth says, “promise me you won’t do any more. Nothing else to raise suspicion, or give them any cause to…”
“I won’t.”
“Swear it, Anton. Make me believe it’s really over, and I can feel some hope for peace.”
“I promise you, I won’t cross the Party again. We’ll lie low, all of us, until we hear the news.” He takes the broken flower from her hand and tucks it in her hair, just above her ear. “It’s nearly over now, Elisabeth. We’ve almost won.”
32
Practice day. The children are lined up in smart rows on the street outside St. Kolumban. They’re holding their instruments before them; they’re standing at eager attention. Anton promised his band that if they rehearsed their parts well, they could play at the equinox, parading down Unterboihingen’s main street in their first public display. Now they await their conductor’s cue with military poise. It’s remarkable how still and attentive children can be when they have good enough reason for it.
He raises his baton. The horns snap up, ready. He counts them down, and in perfect unison, they begin to play.
The piece is “Sch?n ist die Nacht,” a popular and rather sentimental tune. He allowed the children to choose their song; he suspects it must be a favorite of one of the village girls, the sweetheart of some teenage musician—Denis, perhaps, who is big and broad enough to carry the baritone without fatigue, or Erik, trombone, with his roving eye and mischievous smile.
A few students approached him rather tentatively, suggesting something from Duke Ellington or Cab Calloway. Anton had been quick to stamp out the idea. Jazz has been strictly outlawed since 1938. It is fremdl?ndisch—foreigners’ music, reeking of American filth and British impurity. We must give every appearance of being good and loyal Germans—outwardly, at least.
“Where have you heard Ellington and Calloway?” he asked his students, then quickly cut them off with a shake of his head. “Never mind; I don’t want to know if you’ve gone and joined the Swing Youth. No, the band must play something solidly German, from a German composer. Nothing else will do.”
“Sch?n ist die Nacht” has a simple, square, four-four time. It’s slow enough that beginners can march to the tune, so once his students showed some enthusiasm for the safely German piece, Anton agreed they could play it.