Wunderland(109)

At precisely two forty, as Ilse starts her concluding paragraph (While it hasn’t been reported by the Jew-controlled press, cases of Jewish ritual murder have been authenticated as recently as 1932…) her vigilance is finally rewarded. Renate emerges from her apartment in her familiar green coat, looking typically flustered and rushed. As she races off toward the Charlottenburg station Ilse imagines her bursting into class, breathless and pink-cheeked, spouting the same apologies that used to drive Ilse herself mad: The underground was slow. Franz stole my shoes. I couldn’t find my hairbrush/change purse/jacket/Kennkarte.

For a moment Ilse almost smiles. Then she remembers why it is that she’s been waiting here in the first place, and the smile slides from her face like shifting light.



* * *





She has come back to the Bauers’ because her last mission to the household was judged unsuccessful by the only judge who matters in this situation: SS Obergruppenführer von Helldorff, Berlin’s notoriously sadistic chief of police. “This was a very generous opportunity that we’d given you,” he’d reminded Ilse after her last summons to his office. “A chance to redeem yourself after what I, at least, consider the rather serious transgression of interfering with the people’s justice.”

The reference had made Ilse’s hands prickle with sweat.

Eight months after “Berlin’s Night of Righteous Retribution” by I. M. Fischer had gone to press, two Gestapo agents had burst into the BDM editorial office and dragged Ilse outside and into a black sedan. They took her to national Gestapo headquarters, a darkly Gothic-looking building that wears its manicured front garden the way a dragon might wear a tiara. She’d been unsure on the drive what they wanted of her—after all, over half a year had passed since her Kristallnacht encounter with the Bauers. But it quickly became clear as they grilled her: Why had she given a false name to the stormtrooper last November? What was her history with the Bauer family, and Otto Bauer in particular? What were her views on the Jewish question? On Party loyalty? On “the underground Bolshevist movement”?

She’d denied everything, of course. Retrieving the excuses she’d prepared months earlier in anticipation of just this event (even as she dared hope that she wouldn’t actually have to use them) she’d said the SS thugs had misheard her name, which was no surprise as they were utterly drunk. She said that while she’d been friendly with the Bauers at one point in her life, she’d had no idea that they were actually Jews. She’d said she truly had believed that the stormtroopers had made an error, and that her goal had been to protect them from the possible repercussions.

Still, for more than four hours the agents wheedled, cajoled, shouted. At points they’d even screamed directly into her face, a tactic that frightened Ilse enough that she’d almost urinated right there on the spot, especially since they’d also denied her use of the washroom. Even more frightening, however, was the sickening expectation that sooner or later the attack would turn physical. After all, she wasn’t na?ve. She knew that suspects brought to this particular basement quite often only left it on stretchers—or in coffins.

Instead of beating her, however, the agents had driven her to von Helldorff’s office, where she was again denied the use of the washroom. Her bare thighs tightly crossed and her stomach knotted in terror, she’d stood trembling as the Obergruppenführer—whose round blue eyes and pointy ears might have reminded her of Dopey the Dwarf, had they not been topped by the death’s-head-emblazoned cap on his head—laid out her options. Option A was securing evidence of Franz Bauer’s suspected involvement in illegal activities, in which case not only would the black mark on her record be expunged, but von Helldorff would support her application for a choice position in the newly opened propaganda offices in Lodz—and after the war, perhaps even a university scholarship.

Option B was a return trip to Prinz-Albrecht-Stra?e 8. This time, he implied, it would be one-way.

It was a choice that, in other words, was not a choice at all. Still: “I’ll think about it,” she’d told him breathlessly, hoping to at least buy herself time.

“Don’t think too long,” he’d said coldly. “I’ll be away for the summer’s remainder. When I return I’ll expect some intelligence.”

True to his word, he’d called her back in October, his eyes glinting when Ilse confessed she still hadn’t carried out her mission. “It’s been very busy since the invasion,” she’d said desperately. “There is so much to write about, and we’ve been quite short-staffed on the editorial desk.”

“I will give you one more month,” he’d said, ominously. “If you still come up empty you’ll have far more to worry about than your schoolgirl newsletter.”

Now, slowly walking the few short blocks to the Bauers’ front door, Ilse reviews her plan. She isn’t certain when Renate’s class ends, but she doubts she’ll be home until sometime after six. Her mother should be home at roughly the same time or later (she works late a lot at the Jewish Hospital, Renate had said). And Professor Bauer, hopefully, will remain in his room, where according to Renate he now spends all his time.

Which leaves just one unknown: Franz himself. Renate had said nothing about his schedule. And since Ilse hadn’t thought to ask, she has no idea whether he is even home. During her three-hour vigil she’d been hoping to catch him en route in or out, or for a deliveryman or a letter carrier who might summon him to the door. She’d even toyed with the idea of sending something herself, as it rather strikes her as something Madeleine Carroll might have done in I Was a Spy. In the end, though, she had to recognize that she was really just procrastinating. And when she reaches the front door she still finds herself hesitating before finally lifting the tarnished brass knocker. After the three rat-tat-tat’s she presses her ear against the painted wood.