The Knife-Edge Path Read online

  He stared at her through the narrowed space of the doorway. “What about it?” he said.

  “Oh, nothing. These days everyone is wearing one. Back then the man - well, somebody would have to strap him down to put one on.”

  “I see. Before the war?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have absolutely no recollection of you.”

  “You wouldn’t. We never met - that is, the man you resemble.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I’m sure I’ve got off on the wrong foot here, sir. Now before I make a nuisance of myself -”

  She was turning as he pulled the door open a little wider.

  “You’re shivering.”

  She shoved both hands into her coat pockets. “Forgot my mittens again! Will I never learn?”

  He spoke bluntly, unsmiling. “Step in for a moment if you’d care to.”

  She looked up at him, searching his face. “Oh, I’ve been bother enough already.”

  “Come in,” he said, “if you’re not fond of freezing.”

  She made her faint smile look reluctant. “Well, just for a moment. Thank you.”

  He stood aside as she slipped past him.

  As soon as he shut the door she turned to say, “Sorry, I’m Simone Miroux.” She held out her hand.

  He took it gently, barely squeezing. “French?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I got stuck here with some friends after the war broke out. Those of us who tried to go back were detained. Even if they’d let me go, I didn’t think I’d be that much better off in Paris, you know, what with the occupation. I scrape along now, teaching French. Frau Spilde was my latest prospect.”

  “Who was this man you knew before the war?”

  “Oh, as I’ve said, I never really got to know him. Just admired him from afar. Young enough to get a girl’s crush on him besides.” She blinked at him, pursing a coy smile, then suddenly switched to a wistful, solemn look. “That all came to a rather fearful end one night. But I got over him, in time.”

  He folded his arms across his chest, shifted his feet around and cleared his throat. “What end?”

  She frowned and hooked a finger on her lower lip. “Good Lord, I almost said if only you had been there! Ah, well.”

  He watched her as she let the lines drilled into her by Stumpff come back as if what happened long ago, borne on a lifeless curiosity, shook loose, and she could tell it all by heart, but she was there again as if she had been.

  “This was in ’36, at the Municipal theatre in Hagen. A play we had no business going to, my girlfriend and I, it was so dreadfully anti-Christian. I remember the title of it on the billboard: Wittekind. The author, Edmund Kiss, was signing programs in the foyer. We turned our noses up and passed him by as snootily as girls can. When we saw the Brownshirts stationed at all the exits, we almost turned around and left. But Hilda said let’s go on down to hiss and boo, if nothing else. It might be fun, after what we’d read in the Zeitung about all the arrests they’d made the night before, and tonight they were expecting trouble. We were in, so we just found our seats down near the front and looked around at all the people, wondering which ones could be upstarts, like us. Then they all got quiet when the lights went down and the curtain rose. The actors came out like a cast of Molière freaks. Here was this skinny priest on his last legs, a big Nordic bully treating him like dirt for drinking wine out of a silver chalice. Pretty soon we saw where it was going, getting worse and worse, but we held off until Act III, afraid to be the only ones to howl a catcall, when this disgusting actor spouted a line so dreadful, so disgusting - well, you could hear a lot of people gasp when a man down in the front row suddenly leaped up and shouted something like, ‘This is unheard of! We won’t allow our faith to be publicly mocked!’ No sooner did that bring a big hush down across the audience than the Brownshirts jumped him. Two or three at first, then a whole pack piled on and dragged him out into the aisle where they began to kick him and I thought my God, they’re going to kill him! I made a move to help, but Hilda grabbed me by the arm and we were in the stampede in the aisle and everything was pandemonium! Hilda dragged me to a side door and we got out, just in the nick of time.”

  He was looking at her and she saw him now behind some glass.

  She pressed her face to it and blinked.

  He said, “Quite some story. That could get you into a lot of trouble in Berlin.”

  She lifted her eyes saucily. “I haven’t told it to a single soul till now.”

  “How do you know I’m not in the arresting business?”

  She shrugged and made coy eyes at him as he stood there, looking down at her. “I guess I don’t. Maybe I was hoping you could be that man I couldn’t make myself forget in all these years. Any chance of it?”

  “Your memory serves you a lot better than mine does, I’m afraid.”

  She pulled a smile to one side, making it look sad. “Well then, I’d better go out knocking on a few more doors. Some of the nicest things happen accidentally, n’est-ce pas?”

  His tone suddenly took on an on edge, he eyed her more intently. “Odd that you never knew his name,” he said.

  “I might have if I’d read the Zeitung the next day. By then I was so discouraged, and afraid. Most of the Catholics from the audience had been rounded up.”

  He stared down at her, lips parting as if he wanted to say something.

  He didn’t, and she said, “Well, thanks for putting up with me, sir.” She thrust her hand out stiffly. “Goodbye, then.”

  He took her hand mechanically with a faintly dazed look, saying nothing.

  She turned toward the door.

  He stepped around her quickly, turned the knob and pulled.

  She hesitated in the open doorway. “Au revoir, Monsieur. If I should ever find myself over this way again, and chance to knock on your door, for whom should I ask?”

  He gave her a long look before he said, “I’m rarely home, but Kurt will do. Kurt Langsdorff.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” she said. “So it’s as if I’ve never ever seen you in my life.”

  “So it is. Good luck finding Frau Spilde.”

  She said goodbye again, using ‘Herr Langsdorff’ this time, swung into the corridor and walked briskly toward the landing.

  Nearing the head of the stairway she glanced back to see if he was there, the way a man will watch a woman’s body from behind. He’d gone in. She was halfway down the stairs when she caught herself smiling. It hadn’t been that hard. He did have the cobalt blue eyes Stumpff had said to look for, marred only by a scar some Brownshirt gave him to remember him by. Frau Spilde waited somewhere, pacing the floor.

  Stepping off into the vestibule she started across, then stopped there beside the mail slots to catch her breath, feeling suddenly elated. She pushed out into the air full of that glow of twilight when you can feel rain gathering, and farther on, under a darkened lamplight, the air-raid warden standing just outside the entrance to the underground saluted as she passed. A drop of rain struck her face, making her blink.

  A woman passed her walking at a headlong pace, glumly staring at the pavement. No smile on a night like this.

  She looked up and saw the tram ahead, just coming to a stop, and she began to run.

  4

  Geli woke up to the cold nipping her face. That girlish happiness she’d come home with had worn off, and she lay there, trying to get it back. She’d got her foot in the door. Had that to tell Herr Stumpff. Not much, but he wouldn’t be expecting much, this soon.

  She threw the covers off, opened the curtains to a bright day. She felt like making herself look pretty, for nobody in particular. On her way into the bathroom she turned on the radio and left it while she dabbed on makeup and fixed her hair with a beret, snipped off a few grey strands. Strains of Wagner broke through the crackling airwaves, then a silence fell. There was a drum roll. She stopped patting on her rouge and turned her head to listen. It was a voice she knew, and it was solem
n. She’d seen him once across the room at Missie Vassilchikov’s when she’d been working at the Propaganda Ministry. The tone of a dirge was given to Herr Goering to declare:

  ‘The battle of Stalingrad has ended. True to their oath to fight to the last breath, the Sixth Army under the leadership of Field Marshall Paulus has been overcome by the enemy, and by the unfavorable circumstances confronting our forces. The Führer has proclaimed four days of national mourning. All theatres, movies and variety halls are to remain closed until it is over.’

  Static washed again across another pause, then gave way to the crash of what she knew to be the second movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

  A shock-wave seemed to buzz her body for a place to land, but it was all in shambles, burning. The war had come for Gunther, and if he hadn’t died near Minsk she saw him being marched away to Siberia, doomed to fall by the wayside in that wasteland where his being a General wouldn’t save him.

  She got dressed hurriedly, went out and down into the sunshine and across the street.

  The bell above the door tinkled behind her. The butcher was talking to a young woman, wrapping something. The girl turned, saw her and smiled just as the butcher asked what she wanted, and Geli said a pound of Bratwurst.

  The girl glanced at her again, as if she wanted to say something.

  Geli said it for her. “Don’t you live across the street?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We’ve seen each other on the stairway. You may not remember.”

  “Oh no, ma’am. I do remember you.”

  The butcher handed Geli a package and she paid him.

  The girl lingered there while he finished up with her, but turned to go as she was handing him the coins.

  Geli caught up to her in the doorway.

  The door shut with a jingle and they stood out on the wet sidewalk steaming in the sun.

  “You’re Herr Stumpff’s housekeeper, aren’t you?” Geli said.

  “Why, yes. How did you guess?”

  “Herr Stumpff told me about you.”

  The girl stared, letting a simper linger on her full, young lips. “Yes, you’re that lady, aren’t you?”

  “I’m Geli.”

  The girl took her hand firmly. “Hanne.”

  “Shall we get out of this cold? Come up and we’ll have some cake and coffee.”

  “I could only stay a minute.”

  Geli smiled at her, they hurried across behind the passing of a milk truck, and the girl was so lithe beside her, climbing the stairs.

  She was the prettiest thing, so fresh and supple like she’d been an athlete, so bright in her eyes without the slightest need of makeup.

  Geli couldn’t help but wonder how long she would keep that glow about her, living with the likes of Stumpff.

  The flat was warm as Geli had left it, and Hanne admired the surroundings as she got out of her coat, saying, “Oh, what a lovely place, ma’am! Don’t I wish I had this to take care of instead of - oh, well. It’s a job.”

  “Please sit down. I’ll get the coffee.”

  When Geli came back with the coffee and some pound cake on a plate Hanne was admiring her camel’s blanket on the wall. “My, but you’ve been places, ma’am!”

  “Not for some time. The war shrank the world for us, I’m afraid. Brought it down to wondering when the British will start bombing us again.”

  “Any day now, Herr Stumpff says. The farthest away I’ve been from Germany was Paris, when I was very little. I don’t remember much. A lot of glass in a shop somewhere. We were on a bridge once, and there was a sailboat down on the river. I think I remember I was happy.”

  “Will you take a little sugar in your coffee?”

  “Yes, please. One lump.”

  They sat together on the sofa.

  Hanne bit into her cake and smiled, as though apologetically, showing some crumbs on her teeth. “Such tasty cake, ma’am.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “I don’t bake for Herr Stumpff anymore. He hated my pancakes. He’s such a grouch about some things. He likes to say I’m lazy, just because he sometimes catches me reading on his bed. Talk about lazy. He wouldn’t pour a little cream in Trude’s dish to save his soul.”

  “Trude?”

  “Our cat. Well, mine. He blames me for all the hair stuck to his coat. The way I try to share my Blutwurst with the poor little thing. He wants me to throw her into the street, but I won’t. It’s impossible to stand up to him. I’ve never known a man like that. You’ve seen him, ma’am. All scrubbed and shiny like a - and you can shut your eyes till you go blind, but he’s still there. You can smell him, clean as he is, but you see I thought I’d better offer him my body, or he’d dismiss me for not making the silver shine. Well, forgive me, but one time he found me in there cuddled up and waiting in his bed, and what was the first thing out of his mouth? ‘Have you had your bath?’ Like I’d defiled the sheets with a corpse or something! ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I’m not dirty.’ Oh, did he fly into a rage! All of a sudden Trude was a scourge, and I began to wonder if he was well, you know - all there.” She picked up her coffee, held it poised under her lips.

  “You mean crazy?” Geli said.

  The cup clanked on Hanne’s saucer, she shook her head determinedly. “He doesn’t look like much, does he? But one night he came home and slammed the door so hard I almost dropped a plate. I’d got the table set so nice, but how does he treat that? Flings down his gloves and the knives and forks go flying. Then nothing but this awful, hateful red mask looking for something else to cleave. He does that - stares me down without a word and I know what it means. Something happens to him at his work, and when am I going to say what’s the matter, Willy? Like a ritual. I felt sorry for him, really, right when I was so mad at him I wanted to walk right out of there and never come back. Imagine that.”

  “I didn’t realize he could get so violent,” Geli said.

  Hanne reached down and fiddled with her cup in the saucer, twisting it this way and that. Finally, she left it there and said, “He’s kicked me out, you know.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got till day after tomorrow. He wants me to be gone when he comes back from wherever he goes. I’m sorry, ma’am, but it all started when you came along.”

  “Me? But Hanne, I don’t - what makes you think -?”

  Hanne snickered, turning her head aside. She reached for her cup. “No, it’s all right, ma’am. You’re different. You’re sure to do much better with him than I did.” She took a sip of coffee, swallowed and a breath caught in her throat. She looked up, smiling.

  Geli said, “Oh, but I -” Then stopped herself, and lowering her head she said quietly, “I’m sorry, Hanne.”

  Hanne lowered her cup carefully onto the saucer. “Oh, don’t be, ma’am. It’s not your fault. That’s just the way he is.”

  “Yes,” Geli said. Then she looked up. “What way?”

  Hanne shrugged. “I don’t know. Strange. I’ll miss the work, but I’ll do better without him.”

  “You mean -?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. I just did what he wanted, and, well, begging your pardon, but if he wasn’t - why would he prefer you?”

  “No, no, Hanne. Really, it’s not that way.”

  Hanne hunched her shoulders again. “Like I said, ma’am, it’s all right.”

  Geli looked at her. The girl’s fear sidled up to her and took its shape with hers, and she said, “Have you ever seen that driver of his?”

  “Him? You know that awful thing’s got eyes for me. It’s like some snake got loose in the house when I come around a corner and it’s right there looking at me.”

  “You’re very pretty, Hanne,” Geli said.

  “Not for the likes of that one, thank you very much!” She tossed her head, then looking across the room she said wistfully. “I could have been Queen of the May at one time, if it wasn’t for my lowly circumstances.”

  “Don’t think of it
that way. Nothing’s going to stop you from finding somebody to make you happy one day.”

  She frowned at her hands in her lap. “Sometimes I think Herr Stumpff will never really let me go - alive.”

  “It’s just the war. Once that’s over -”

  “Did you read about the awful end that’s on the way to Stalingrad? First Moscow, now this? What’s going to happen as soon as we get beat? He’s done some terrible things in Poland that he bragged about. I’m scared of him.”

  “What things?”

  “I daren’t say. Something about the Jews. He wasn’t some stupid little watchmaker, he said, some farmer spreading chicken manure. Don’t let the ‘Captain’ fool you, he said. It’s really Obersturmbannführer, Captain for short. That’s why he’s got the privileges: a car, a driver of his own. One night he blamed me for not knowing. He had big responsibilities! These people were our enemies. The Führer had a plan, and he was part of it. He wasn’t going to be left out. When he was in Warsaw in the early days, he said, all they needed was to find so little as a pen-knife on somebody, they’d arrest him. They’d never be heard from again. They’d go up a chimney. That’s where they end up anyway, he said, not nearly fast enough to please Herr Himmler. I started to cry and he got mad and ordered me to stop.” Suddenly a gasp escaped her, then a sob she tried to swallow back.

  “Oh, Hanne.” Geli wanted to take the girl in her arms, but she was snuffing back her tears and with her fingers smearing them across her cheek. Geli reached for her shoulder.

  Hanne looked up. “He comes to see you sometimes, doesn’t he?”

  “I met him on the landing, once. I’ve asked him to help me find my husband who’s gone missing on the Russian front.”

  “Pardon, ma’am, but I wouldn’t ask for too much help from the likes of him. You might end up like me.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Geli said. “Now, listen. Do you have any place to go?”

  “I’ve got some people, distant relatives, in Leipzig. I used to play with Inga when we were little.” Her eyes suddenly grew wide, groping. “You won’t tell him I was here, will you? You don’t know a thing about me, where I’ve gone. All right?”